


Secrets Are Better When We Keep Them Together

by Duck_Life



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: Ambi Implied/Pre-Ambi, Coming Out, Diners, Friendship, Gen, Sleepovers, Texting, WLW & MLM Solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 13:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14833068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Amber finds out about Cyrus and wants to talk to him. Set shortly after the Bash-mitzvah.





	Secrets Are Better When We Keep Them Together

When the text first pops up on her phone, Andi thinks her messaging app must be glitching. Because why on earth would Amber be texting her, after that fiasco at the Ferris wheel? But there it is, a text from Amber.  _ my parents r fighting. would bex be cool w/ it if i came over? _

Andi recognizes what she’s doing; she’s giving her the option to say no, no my mom wouldn’t be alright with it. She could say that Bex said no, and Amber wouldn’t be able to hold it against her. Amber’s giving her an out.

Andi doesn’t take it.

_ Sure!  _ she texts back.  _ Bring comfy pjs.  _ Because life is confusing and one of these days Amber’s going to give her whiplash from going back and forth between nice and mean. But the fact is, the brief time they were just hanging out together, pre-Ferris wheel (PFW), Andi actually did have a good time with her. So she invites her over.

* * *

 

Amber shows up about an hour after she sent the text with a Vera Bradley tote slung over her elbow. “Hi,” she says, waving awkwardly at Andi in the doorway. When Bex spots her, she raises an eyebrow but says nothing. “How’s it going?”

How’s it going? Well, Andi is maybe, sort of, kind of Jonah’s girlfriend right now, but there’s no way she can say that to Amber. And Buffy is maybe, probably, could be moving and she absolutely doesn’t want to talk about  _ that _ with Amber. So Andi says, “Fine.” She glances back at the kitchen. “I just made some Totino’s, you want some?”

Amber and Andi wind up sequestered in Andi’s bedroom, trading superficial stories about school and assignments and Demi Lovato and math. Andi doesn’t want to talk about Jonah and Amber doesn’t want to talk about her parents, so together they figure out some crafty new ways to avoid those topics entirely. 

“Bex has a bunch of cool stage makeup lying around,” Andi says at one point. “Wanna give each other makeovers?”

“Yeah okay,” Amber says, popping a Totino in her mouth. “Like normal makeovers? Or monster makeovers?”

Andi shrugs. “How about a little of both?” 

So they do. Amber paints Andi’s lips with a bright bubblegum pink matte lipstick and helps her attach long fake eyelashes, but then she also adds a realistic-looking gash to Andi’s forehead, complete with some fake stitches. 

“I call it… Prom Queen Vampire Victim,” Amber declares, backing away to admire her handiwork. “Okay, do me.” 

Andi gives her dark red blush and darker red lipstick, and then she adds some pale foundation and scary dark circles below Amber’s eyes in purple. As a finishing touch, she gets the fake blood and dribbles a drop down Amber’s chin.  

“All done,” Andi says, laughing a little, having fun despite herself. “Looks like you’re the vampire that got me.” 

Amber glances at her face in the mirror. “Whoa! Nice,” she says, combing her fingers through her hair, letting it hang in a curtain around her face. “Looks good. Looks  _ scary _ good.” 

“Here, take my picture,” Andi says, handing Amber her phone. She backs up and strikes a pose, sticking out her bottom lip in a theatrical pout. 

Amber swipes open Andi’s camera app and starts snapping photos. Andi has fun with it, bouncing into a couple different poses. But as Amber watches her on the cell phone screen, something pops up. 

A text, from Buffy. It’s in the group chat with her, Andi and Cyrus.  _ I just saw jonah beck using BING, the monster.  _ Amber snorts and keeps photographing. Then Buffy sends another text.  _ Can’t believe both of you are crushing on a guy who uses Bing.  _

Amber’s fingers still. Andi, still posing, seems to notice the change. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Amber mumbles, dropping Andi’s cell phone on the bed like it burned her. She doesn’t want Andi to think she was  _ snooping _ , it was just that the texts popped up and she couldn’t help but see them. “No, just, um… you got a text.”

“Oh.” Andi doesn’t sound worried… but then, she doesn’t know what the text says. She takes the phone from the bed and scans the messages… and then her face falls. “ _ Oh _ .” 

“So,” Amber says, feeling heat rise to her face, even though she’s maybe not the one who should be embarrassed or upset. “Cyrus likes Jonah?”

Andi usually looks fairly unthreatening, sweet. Right now she looks fierce and incredibly protective of her friend, and her voice is imperative, authoritative. “You  _ cannot _ tell anyone.”

“I won’t!”

“Especially not Jonah!”

“Andi, I wouldn’t do that.” 

She looks sincere, her eyes wide and her eyebrows drawn together, but Andi can’t help but feel like she’s betrayed Cyrus’s trust without even meaning to. It’s like she divulged army secrets to enemy troops. “If you tell anyone,” Andi says, “or if you ever do anything to hurt him, I will make sure it comes back around to you. And you’ll be sorry.”

“I promise, Andi,” Amber says, crossing her heart. “I won’t tell.”

* * *

 

The rest of the night is pretty tense. Instead of talking, they chow down on Nilla Wafers and watch “Golden Girls” reruns until they’re tired, and then Andi sends Amber to sleep in her bed while she takes the couch. 

Andi thinks everything’s done and settled until lunchtime Monday, when Cyrus gets a text. He reads it to her, Buffy and Jonah. “ _ Can we meet at The Spoon after school today _ ?” Cyrus reads out loud, staring at his phone over the straw in his milk carton. “ _ P.S. This is Amber _ .” He drops his phone like it zapped him. “How does Amber have my number?”

“See this is why I keep telling you to get a burner phone,” Buffy says, her lip curling. Andi looks down guiltily… and is surprised when she notices Jonah doing the same thing. 

“I gave her your number,” Jonah admits. “Sorry, I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.” 

“No, it’s completely fine,” Buffy says, gritting her teeth so hard she could grind coffee beans. “Who needs the Yellow Pages when there’s a Jonah Beck around?” 

“I’ll ask next time,” Jonah promises, and then he glances at the time on his phone. “I gotta go print something out before class. See ya.” 

“Bye buddy,” Buffy says, letting her barely contained annoyance simmer. As soon as Jonah’s out of earshot, she pivots back to Cyrus. “Why does Amber want to talk to you about?”

“I have no idea,” Cyrus says, squinting at his phone like it has all the answers.

Andi slowly looks up from her potato salad. “I do,” she says, frowning. “Last night, Amber slept over and she just  _ glanced _ at my phone for like a second but… she saw our group chat. And she knows about Cyrus.” Buffy looks furious but Cyrus just seems resigned, like there’s nothing that can be done. “B-but I made her promise not to tell anyone!”

“Oh really?” Buffy says sourly. “Did you pinky swear?” 

“She probably just wants to talk to Cyrus, maybe apologize for the fact that she knows,” Andi reasons. 

“Are you sure?” Cyrus says, voice higher than normal. “Because she found out  _ you _ liked Jonah and you wound up trapped on top of a Ferris wheel. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“Why don’t you meet her at the Spoon and have, like, a codeword to text us so we can come rescue you?” Andi says. “It could be, um…”

“How about ‘Snorpion’?” Buffy suggests, taking a long pull on the straw in her milk carton. She shoots a dark look at Andi.

* * *

 

Later, as Jonah’s pulling books out of his locker, Andi pops up to say goodbye to him, with Buffy alongside her. “Hey guys,” Jonah says. “What does Amber want to talk to Cyrus about anyway?”

“Oh, he’s helping her with…” While Jonah’s locker door obscures them from his sight, Buffy and Andi almost-silently converse. “What does Cyrus know about?” Andi whispers.

“Hair-care? Herpetology? Hebrew?” Buffy whispers back.

“Hebrew!” Andi almost hollers. “Cyrus is teaching her Hebrew.” 

“Cool,” Jonah says, collecting everything he needs and slamming his locker. “Why?” 

Buffy’s eyes flash in warning but Andi’s got it covered. “Her audition! For, for,  _ Fiddler on the Roof _ .” 

“Oh,” Jonah says, and for a split second Andi’s worried he won’t buy it. But of course he does. “Sounds cool! Maybe we could go see it.”

“Tickets are already sold out,” Andi says. “A-and Amber’s super nervous about it so don’t bring it up when you see her. She’ll probably just pretend she has no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Okay, I won’t,” Jonah says, flashing her a sunny smile. Sweet, innocent Jonah. He believes everything so easily. Sometimes Andi worries that eventually she’ll have to save him from falling for a pyramid scheme or a stranger offering him cotton candy. “See you guys later.” He waves and walks away. 

Buffy rolls her eyes. “You know they took the word ‘gullible’ out of the dictionary?”

“I’ve heard that joke before.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Buffy says. “They took the word ‘gullible’ out of the dictionary… and replaced it with a picture of Jonah Beck.” She links arms with Andi. “Come on. Let’s go walk Cyrus into the Snorpion’s cave.”

* * *

 

Cyrus’s palms start sweating two blocks away from the Spoon. “What if she threatens to tell everybody?” he says, his voice jumping up an octave. “What if she puts it on Instagram and lets the whole school find out?” 

“Then we will destroy her,” Buffy says calmly. “You got this, Goodman. We’ll be with you up to the door and we’ll be waiting for you when you’re done. And whatever she says to you… we’ll handle it, okay?”

Cyrus nods, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Okay.”

Andi wishes she could say something supportive like that. She wishes she weren’t responsible for all this. 

They say goodbye to Cyrus outside the Spoon, Andi and Buffy shooting him thumbs-ups. Then he goes inside to face whatever Amber has to say to him.

“Hi!” Amber says, surprising Cyrus with a smile. She waves at him from a table near the back. He notes that she’s wearing her normal clothes, not her waitress uniform, and that she already has a basket of baby taters sitting in front of her. “I’m glad you came. I know we’re not exactly besties and… well, I’m just glad you came.”

“Yeah,” Cyrus says lamely, taking the seat across from her. He sits rigidly, his hands folded on the table. “So. What’s up?”

“You like Jonah,” she says bluntly. 

Cyrus’s shoulders sag. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She looks bemused. “You don’t have to be sorry,” she says. “He’s not my boyfriend anymore. And even when he was… I never  _ owned _ him.” He glances at her, skeptical. “I never owned him,” she repeats. “And I shouldn’t have acted like I did.” 

“Alright, well, now you know,” Cyrus says, resolutely not touching the baby taters. It feels like that story about Hades and Persephone, and if he eats any of the food here he’ll be trapped with Amber in purgatory. “Can I leave?”

Amber frowns. “I just wanted to ask you something,” she says, looking suddenly vulnerable. “You like Jonah. So that means that you’re… you know.”

“Gay. You can say it. It’s not a bad word.”

“I just… I mean… how did you know?” 

Cyrus feels so taken aback by the question that he forgets about Persephone and reaches for a baby tater. “I just knew,” he says, except that’s not really accurate. “Okay. Okay. It was like… it was like I felt like I had to do all this stuff to be normal. Like every time we went out, I was acting in a play. And I didn’t know my lines. And I had the worst stage fright ever.” Amber nods sympathetically and Cyrus actually cracks a smile. It’s weird to see her look sympathetic. “I just got so tired of acting. And pretending to be something I’m not. I guess I figured out how I’m  _ not _ before I figured out how I am.” 

“Acting like something you’re not,” Amber repeats. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s how I felt, too, with Jonah.” 

Cyrus can’t help it; his mouth drops open. “Uh, I was actually talking about Iris.” 

Amber’s face turns white, but she tries to hide her panic by taking a big gulp of Coke. “Cyrus,” she says finally, “I’m really sorry I found out about you the way I did. And I promise I’ll never tell anybody as long as I live.” 

For the first time since stepping into the diner, Cyrus feels the fist around his heart unclench. He was so scared, so worried that Amber invited him here to threaten him. Now he knows that’s not the case. “I appreciate that,” he says meekly. 

“Can you promise me that if I tell you something you won’t tell anybody else?” Amber says, eyes wide and serious. Cyrus is just trying to recover from the disorientation he’s experiencing. Half an hour ago, Amber scared him. And now it feels like they’re connecting, like they’ve found some common ground. He just isn’t sure what it is. 

“I promise,” Cyrus says. 

“I think I like girls.” Oh, that’s what it is. That’s the common ground. “I’ve been thinking it for awhile. But it used to be that I would think about it and then shove it back down, and then I had Jonah. And then I didn’t have Jonah and I felt like everybody was going to see through me and just…  _ know _ .” She’s babbling, but Cyrus doesn’t stop her. Their whole dynamic has shifted in about two seconds. He didn’t realize how nice it would be to actually interact with someone else who shared this big secret. “But then I found out about  _ you _ and I just… Cyrus, I think you’re the only person I can talk to about this right now. And I know you probably don’t want to talk to me at all, so. I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t… not want to talk to you,” he says slowly, trying to find the right words. Too bad, he thinks wryly. One perk of being gay was not having to struggle when talking to girls. At least, it was supposed to be. “I didn’t before. But you’re different now. And I don’t just mean because of what you told me. I can tell you’re trying to change. Andi sees it and Buffy doesn’t see it, and I’ve been kind of balancing between the two of them. I’m really glad you trust me enough to tell me.” He smiles, remembering something. “Did you know I actually came out for the first time at the booth over there?” 

Amber looks where he’s pointing. “For real?”

“Yep,” Cyrus says, grinning. 

“To Andi and Buffy?”

“Just Buffy,” he says. “I didn’t even tell Andi until… like, last week.” He relaxes a little more, sitting back. “Am I the first person you told?”

“First person, yeah,” she confirms. “I told my goldfish when I was, like, ten.” She sniffs. “Goldie Hawn took that secret to her watery grave.”

* * *

 

When Andi and Buffy come back to collect Cyrus, they’re amazed to see him laughing with Amber, and even more amazed when the two hug goodbye. 

“Jeez, what did you guys talk about?” Andi says, astonished. They’re walking back to the Macks’ house to have dinner—  Celia invited everyone for leftovers. 

“We talked about Jonah,” Cyrus says, which isn’t a complete lie. He can tell Buffy and Andi want more details, though. “Look, Amber’s not going to tell anyone my secrets. So I’m not telling anybody hers.” He loops an arm around each of his best friends. “Now, onward! I’m starving.”

* * *

 

That night, Andi gets a text from Amber.  _ hang out again this weekend? _

Andi can’t help it; she smiles. Watching Amber with Cyrus today felt really good— she’s kind of proud of Amber, even. Andi’s been protective of Cyrus for as long as she's known him. It feels nice to see Amber making an effort with someone Andi cares about so much. 

She texts back.  _ Definitely. :) _

Andi’s already half-asleep when her phone buzzes again. She checks it— another text from Amber.  _ looking 4ward to it.  _

_ <3 _


End file.
